It is well known in the turf care industry that the health of the turf can be enhanced by periodically aerating the turf. Aerating the turf involves punching an array of spaced holes into the ground over the area of the turf that is to be aerated. Such aeration holes relieve soil compaction and facilitate the entry of air and water into the turf. This has a beneficial effect on the turf and leads to healthier, more vigorous turf.
One type of tine used in conjunction with such aerators is a hollow tine designed to pull up a generally cylindrical aeration core from the turf. Each aeration core typically includes an upper grassy or plant containing layer and a lower soil layer that underlies and comes up with the upper layer. Such hollow tines deposit the aeration cores which they pull out of the turf back down onto the surface of the turf. Thus, following the completion of an aeration operation, the surface of the turf will be covered or littered with a large number of aeration cores. The aeration cores will cover the turf surface wherever they fell and are spaced from one another atop the turf surface in various rows and columns of cores.
The aeration cores left by an aerator can be left on top of the turf surface where they will gradually decompose and erode back into the turf surface. Simply leaving the cores in place is often done in a homeowner's yard after the yard has been aerated. The aeration cores will gradually erode or disintegrate over time and fall back down into the canopy of the turf surface. Unfortunately, this can take some time to do since known aeration cores are relatively thick having a diameter of ⅜ to ⅞ of an inch or so and a length from ½ to 4 inches or so.
In other areas where the grass is cut quite short and the turf surface sees relatively heavy and constant use, such as the greens and fairways of golf courses or the surfaces of sports fields such as soccer fields, it is not desirable to simply leave the cores in place to erode over time. Instead, the cores are usually positively broken up and dispersed down into the turf surface. This permits the turf surface to quickly return to its normal state to allow continued use thereof, namely to allow play to resume on the greens or fairways of the golf course or on the surfaces of the sports fields.
Various methods of treating the aeration cores left on the ground have been adopted and used in the past. In one case, a drag mat or the like is dragged over the turf surface, and thus over the cores lying on the turf surface, to break up the cores into pieces and to force these smaller pieces back down into the turf surface. Alternatively, various powered machines have been developed that will mechanically disintegrate the cores by the operation of rotary flails or choppers, such as the machine shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,905,424. In some of these machines, the cores are picked up off the ground, the upper grassy layer of the core is separated from the soil portion of the core, the soil portion of the core is disintegrated and deposited back down into the turf, and the grassy portions of the core are collected in a hopper. U.S. Pat. No. 6,142,240 to Underhill shows a core processor of this latter type.
Existing core processors often use various fixed flanges or surfaces against which the cores are thrown to aid in their disintegration. However, when the cores being processed are wet, the cores or pieces of the cores tend to stick or build up on such surfaces. This build up can happen to such an extent that the core processor is no longer effective for its task. One must stop using the core processor and take the time to clean the surfaces that have accumulated the built up aeration core debris. This can be time consuming and inconvenient. Thus, there is a need in the art for a core processor that is more effective in pulverizing the aeration cores without using numerous impact surfaces to aid in disintegrating the cores, even when the cores being comminuted tend to be sticky and adherent.
Another desirable goal for a core processor is to enable the processor to properly pick up cores from the ground without missing many cores. Existing core processors use a pair of transport wheels to allow the core processor to roll over the ground. Such transport wheels are needed in a transport mode to allow the core processor to be transported from one location to another at an acceptable speed. However, such transport wheels do not follow ground contours well on very uneven terrain. Thus, existing core processors have a tendency to miss some cores entirely, or to dig into the ground and perhaps crush or mash some cores without picking them up, when the core processor is being moved or very uneven terrain. This is disadvantageous.